Mystery is an Art (SCPL)

Who would want to kill Tomaso Rainaldi, an elderly, unassuming violin-maker in the quiet Italian city of Cremona? For his friend and fellow violin-maker Gianni Castiglione, the murder is as mysterious as it is shocking. Rainaldi had few possessions, no enemies and little money. No one – least of all the police – can fathom a motive for murdering him. All he really had was an obsessive love of violins and an encyclopedic knowledge of them. But...

"While freelance writer Robyn Guthrie settles into her new home, which came with a few surprises, she learns her mother Lizzie, drama queen of Dryden Manor Assisted Living, has one of her own--a new boyfriend, Lionel. When he dies suddenly, leaving a pulp fiction novel in Lizzie's care, Robyn and Lizzie soon realize he was not all he appeared to be. Lionel's mysterious past is buried in the book along with a last, desperate clue that may lead to the...

"When art historian Nora Barnes returns to France for a Van Gogh conference in the charming medieval village of Saint-Paul-de-Vence, she’s expecting a vigorous debate about whether the famed artist’s suicide was actually a homicide. But on the night before the conference, an elderly French woman who’d promised to reveal important evidence is found face down in the village fountain, and her Chanel briefcase is nowhere to be seen. During a week...

Alix London, the art restorer and FBI consultant renowned as the Art Whisperer, can spot a counterfeit masterpiece before the paint even dries. What she can't see is why an elite European art dealer would offer her big money for a little mirror that's no more than a homemade gift from her beloved uncle Tiny. Not that Alix would part with it at any price. But when the mirror is abruptly stolen from her home, she realizes that someone sees more in the...

A brown leather briefcase containing priceless family jewels brings chaos and carnage to Bea's ordered life in the latest lively Abbot Agency mystery. Looking forward to a peaceful weekend, Bea Abbot's plans are disrupted by the unexpected arrival of one of her clients, bearing a brown leather briefcase full of expensive jewellery. Magda Summerleys has been working as a housekeeper for wealthy art expert Lucas Rycroft who, she says, entrusted her...

Kim Lord is an avant-garde figure, feminist icon, and agent provocateur in the L.A. art scene. Her groundbreaking new exhibition Still Lives is comprised of self-portraits depicting herself as famous, murdered women--the Black Dahlia, Chandra Levy, Nicole Brown Simpson, among many others--and the works are as compelling as they are disturbing, implicating a culture that is too accustomed to violence against women. As the city's richest art patrons...

"From the dawn of the twentieth century to the devastation of World War II, this exhilarating novel of love, war, art, and family gives voice to two extraordinary women and brings to life the true story behind the creation and near destruction of Gustav Klimt's most remarkable paintings. In the dazzling glitter of 1900 Vienna, Adele Bloch-Bauer--young, beautiful, brilliant, and Jewish--meets painter Gustav Klimt. Wealthy in everything but freedom,...

"A woman and her young son flee to a convent on a remote island off the Breton coast of France. Generations of seafarers have named the place de la Brume, or Fog Island. In a chapel high on a cliff, a tragic death occurs and a terrified child vanishes into the mist. The child's godmother, Maggie O'Shea, haunted by the violent deaths of both her husband and her best friend, has withdrawn from her life as a classical pianist. But then a recording of...

"Foreign Gods, Inc., tells the story of Ike, a New York-based Nigerian cab driver who sets out to steal the statue of an ancient war deity from his home village and sell it to a New York gallery. Ike's plan is fueled by desperation. Despite a degree in economics from a major American college, his strong accent has barred him from the corporate world. Forced to eke out a living as a cab driver, he is unable to manage the emotional and material needs...

An old-money East Coast family faces the suspicious death of its patriarch and the unsolved theft of a Goya painting rumored to be cursed. There are four cousins in the Morse family: perfect Kenny, the preppy West Coast lawyer; James, the shy but brilliant medical student; his seductive, hard-drinking sister Audrey; and Teresa, youngest and most fragile, haunted by the fear that she has inherited the madness that possessed her father. Their grandfather...